Crashing a pharmaceutical gala when you are a fugitive literally drenched in blood? This movie is from 1993, but that’s a 2020 mood.
The Fugitive Is The Only Good Movie Rating: 13/10 DVDs of The Fugitive
Once upon a time, Lindy West was the movie critic for Seattle's alternative newsweekly The Stranger before moving on to write about more serious, political topics. Locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic as she was finishing this book of essays intended to reconsider the movies she loved as a younger viewer, and increasingly disturbed by the state of America’s political situation, West “started to find a strange comfort in the task of making this book for you and thinking about it in your hands and homes — this silly, inconsequential, ornery, joyful, obsessive, rude, and extremely stupid book. More than anything I want this book to make you feel like you were at a movie night with your best friend (me).” This book is silly and ornery, and really very funny; it’s exactly what I hoped for without knowing how much I needed it. I’m not a huge fan of Hollywood movies, so West’s takedown of various blockbusters was hilarious and relatable to me; and even where she brings out her feminist lens to dissect some of these movies — and especially romances, written by men for women (as in The Notebook, Titanic, or Love, Actually, from where she gets the book’s title) — she makes you think, “Yeah. Why did I ever go along with that being okay?” I laughed out loud reading several of these essays and Lindy West made me think — What more could I want? (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Gump reunites with Lieutenant Dan and vows to use his Ping-Pong endorsement money to fulfill Bubba’s dream of being a shrimp boat captain. Lieutenant Dan, for some reason, is EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL that this dude who’s already met three presidents, won a Congressional Medal of Honor, wrote John Lennon’s “Imagine”, blew the whistle on Watergate, and made tens of thousands of dollars PLAYING PING-PONG could possibly achieve the famously insurmountable dream of buying a medium size boat in Alabama and riding around on it looking for shrimp. “If you’re ever a shrimp boat captain, that’s the day I’m an astronaut.”
DUDE. HE IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MAN IN THE WORLD.
Dude, You Gotta Stop Listening To Your Mom (and also, Jen-nay sucks) Rating: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive
For whatever ironic? reason, West opens this collection with an essay on The Fugitive — The best movie because it has the best lines and is never scary, only interesting and exciting. All other movies should quit. Case Closed. GAVEL. — and all other movies are rated against it. Most movies score in the midrange, but her least favourites (American Pie and Love, Actually) score just one and zero “DVDs of The Fugitive” respectively, and her most favourites (Jurassic Park and Shawshank Redemption) come in at a whopping ten and eleven “DVDs of The Fugitive” (Note above where The Fugitive itself rates 13/10 DVDs of The Fugitive). There’s a lot of fun to be had watching West recount the ridiculous plotlines of movies like Face/Off or Bad Boys II (I can not imagine the story pitches that got these projects greenlit: John Travolta and Nic Cage? Will Smith and Martin Lawrence? Say no more! Take! My! Money!) and it’s interesting to see how she has had to reevaluate some adolescent favourites like Reality Bites or Garden State. I don’t need to go over all of her reviews, but here are a couple of samples of the writing style. On Nicolas Cage in Face/Off (who makes a reappearance in The Rock):
It is madness, by the way, that every director does not do whatever it takes — financially, spiritually, erotically — to put Nicolas Cage in everything they make. He is the only person who ever does anything interesting in any movie. Yeah, I said it! Do I mean it? I don’t know. But I do know that sometimes I forget about Nicolas Cage for weeks or even years at a time, and then I watch a Nicolas Cage movie again and it feels like coming home — to a house where your dad is cocaine and mom licks your face if you’ve been good AND if you’ve been bad. I’m happy there!
Ma’am, Please Just Get a Divorce Rating: 6/10 DVDs of The Fugitive
And a 2020 view of American Pie:
I know that gen Z has it tough — they’re losing their proms and graduations to the quarantine, they’re on deck to bear the full brunt of climate catastrophe, and they’re inheriting a carcass of a society that’s been fattened up and picked clean by the billionaire class, leaving them with virtually no shot at a life without crushing financial and existential anxiety, let alone any fantasy of retiring from their thankless toil or leaving anything of value to their own children. That’s bad. BUT, counterpoint! Millennials have to deal with a bunch of that same stuff, PLUS we had to be teenagers when American Pie came out! What I’m saying is that suffering IS a contest and I DO stand by that and straight teenage boys losing their virginities IS worse than not having breathable air. Okay??????
Know Your Enemy Rating: 1/10 DVDs of The Fugitive
Reading this didn’t change my life but it certainly entertained me (and snuck in some thinking points) and I am thoroughly glad to have cleared an afternoon for it. Highly recommended for anyone who doesn’t take their films too seriously.
